The Disgruntled Pigeon Seller
The disgruntled pigeon seller stacked his crates of pigeons and grumbled as he stalked out the temple area, reluctantly following Jesus’ instructions. He had looked forward to the Passover feast for some time, trapping his pigeons and anticipating his sales.
Later that day, now perched on the road up to the temple, during a quiet period, he reflected on the incident. He wondered how his focus had changed from the celebration of the Passover as thanking God for the beginning of his people and their escape from slavery to one of commerce and making money.
It is the same with our lives and those of our family and friends. Often, we gradually lose focus on the true meaning of our lives and significant events and get distracted with material possessions. We each need moments when Jesus arrives with a cord to chase away these demons and restore the priority of prayer and worship.
Jesus’ exhortation that we must live in the world but not of the world is discarded and replaced by a desire to satisfy our senses. Our careers become narrowly focused on getting ahead, climbing the ladder, making money. Young people forget their Confirmation promises and preoccupy themselves with pleasing their peers and pandering to the world’s false ideas.
This week’s Gospel of Jesus cleansing the temple from such distractions, with a cord, is a call for us to reprioritize the objectives and goals of our lives, to root out the evil that has wormed its way into our very being.
St John’s Gospel message is a call to re-examine our lifestyle and those of our spouse and children and to extract the demons of false ideas that have imperceptively taken a hold in our psyches. In the Gospel we witness that to do this we must turn to Jesus, calling him to visit our families and homes to set things right. To free us from unclean spirits.
Our Lord Jesus Christ we invite you into the temples of our lives and those of our family and homes and exorcise all the demons that torment us with their evil intentions and false promises. Cleanse us and make us holy again!